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L’inspiration musicale du peintre : motifs, fictions et stratégies dans les Vies de Gérard de Lairesse

2011; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/hista.2011.3378

2802-3285

Marie-Pauline Martin,

Historical Art and Culture Studies

The Painter’s Inspiration and Virtuosity : Patterns, Fictions and Strategies in the Lives of Gérard de Lairesse. In 1721, Arnold Houbraken published the third and last volume of the Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en schilderessen, inspired by the historiographical model of Vasari’s Vitae, in order to defend the merits of the Dutch school. Gérard de Lairesse is described in this work as a hero, embodying the genius of Dutch painting. With few sources available, very little is in fact known of the life of the painter. Thus, his youth and training is passed over in favor of a more colorful anecdote on Lairesse’s decisive meeting with the famous Amsterdam art dealer Gerrit van Uylenburg. Fictitious but nonetheless enlightening, this anecdote sketches an idealistic portrait of Lairesse, forged from two intelligible motifs of the theologies of revelation (virtuosity and musical inspiration), in accordance with a clearly deliberated strategy : to remove any suggestion of labor from the painter’s work, to lend a poetic energy to the painterly gesture, and to establish the artist’s genius by using the same means by which saints are glorified.